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4. Formal Logic / G. Formal Mereology / 1. Mereology

[formalised general theory of how parts relate to wholes]

23 ideas
It seems absurd that seeing a person's limbs, the one is many, and yet the many are one [Plato]
Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle]
Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P]
Dedekind originally thought more in terms of mereology than of sets [Dedekind, by Potter]
The part-whole relation is ultimate and indefinable [Russell]
The counties of Utah, and the state, and its acres, are in no way different [Goodman]
Megethology is the result of adding plural quantification to mereology [Lewis]
Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi]
Part and whole contribute asymmetrically to one another, so must differ [Fine,K]
Mereology implies that acceptance of entities entails acceptance of conglomerates [Burgess/Rosen]
'Gunk' is an object in which proper parts all endlessly have further proper parts [Sider]
Mereology began as a nominalist revolt against the commitments of set theory [Harte,V]
Mereology has been exploited by some nominalists to achieve the effects of set theory [Orenstein]
Mereology need not be nominalist, though it is often taken to be so [Varzi]
Are there mereological atoms, and are all objects made of them? [Varzi]
There is something of which everything is part, but no null-thing which is part of everything [Varzi]
Classical mereology doesn't apply well to the objects around us [Simons]
A 'part' has different meanings for individuals, classes, and masses [Simons]
Complement: the rest of the Universe apart from some individual, written x-bar [Simons]
Criticisms of mereology: parts? transitivity? sums? identity? four-dimensional? [Simons]
Mereology elides the distinction between the cards in a pack and the suits [Potter]
The 'aggregative' objections says mereology gets existence and location of objects wrong [Koslicki]